BARBARA HALE: A DOCTOR’S DAUGHTER

“OH,” GASPED BABS, “I DIDN’T KNOW——”

BARBARA HALE: A DOCTOR’S DAUGHTER CHAPTER ISEA SANDS AND SOMERSAULTS

They dug their heels deeper into the white sand. As they were bare heels there seemed to be nothing else to do with them.

“I think it’s simply a wonderful idea,” Louise St. Clair reiterated, “only, I can’t just see how you are going to feed us all for three whole days, Cara.”

“Feed you! Dear child, that’s the easiest part of it. Lottie adores feeding the hungry. But what bothers me is what I can do to keep you all happy.” Cara Burke, who had never been called Caroline, took her heels out of the sand and stuck them up in the sunshine. She was so strictly modern and so much up to date that her own personal schedule must have been eons ahead of the time marked on the pretty calendars sent around by M. Helmer, the butcher.

“A house party is bound to make us all so happy we’ll never want to go home, Cara,” declared Esther Deane, she with a new boyish bob hair-cut that she couldn’t keep her hands off. “I’d like to fetch my trunk, if we only lived a few blocks farther away.”

“Fetch it; there’re bushels of room out in the garage,” responded Cara mischievously. “But you know, children, my list isn’t filled yet. I have just got to have Barbara Hale.”

“Barbara Hale!” Both girls exclaimed in perfect unison.

“Yes.” Cara squatted on her bare feet now and showed signs of conflict. “I want her. I like her. She’s so different, she’s sure to be good fun.”

“Good fun!” Esther almost sneered. “About as funny as a Latin exam, I’d guess. She looks different, and she is different. But at a house party! Cara, you’re crazy.”

“So they say,” agreed Cara dryly. “But I’m going to ask her, just the same.”

“She’ll never leave that dad of hers,” declared Louise. “You know he’s some kind of a queer doctor and they say she’s going to be a nurse.”

“He’s a bacteriologist,” Esther informed her friends, with that very definite tone always peculiarly Esther’s when she knew anything so worth while as that.

“Well,” drawled Cara, “Dudley says she’s a peach, and while he’s not to come to the party he might just look in and——”

“And poor us! We may have to rival a peach,” moaned Louise. “I do wish you wouldn’t, Cara,” she pleaded again. “Honestly, I am afraid of anything so high and mighty as Barbara Hale.”

“Why should she be so high and mighty?” challenged Cara. “She’s no older than we are.”

“She’s past fifteen, I should think,” guessed Esther.

“I suppose she is, for she was in first year high last summer when we came back to Sea Cosset; I remember that,” agreed Cara quite amicably. Cara wasn’t merely pretty, she was lively always, and her brown eyes managed her entire face so capably one never noticed the little irregularity of her other features. Every one said Cara Burke was “all eyes” and her eyes were lovely.

“It’s queer how every one thinks Barbara is so wonderful,” Esther was determined to find fault. “She just acts like an old lady, it seems to me.”

“Esther Phester! How dare you!” mocked Cara. “Now, you’re being jealous. You see, it’s like this. There are lots of wise old ladies but a wise young lady is different.”

“You talk rather wise yourself and you’re not so old,” retorted Louise.

“I am old. I love to be. Children are a pest, so please don’t act so childish, girls,” Cara in turn retorted. “You’re both perfectly lovely when you talk sensibly, so let’s decide how we are going to get the wily Barbara to our house party. Any suggestions?”

Persons just sauntering along for a rather late swim attracted their attention, and for the time being Barbara Hale was apparently forgotten. New and odd bathing suits were ever interesting to the girls, and those at the moment being displayed were certainly novel if not actually new.

“How can red-headed girls wear that howling yellow?” commented Louise. “She looks like a gasoline sign.” Her own hair favored the red tints, what there was of it.

“That tango is worse,” declared Esther. “They must be strangers.”

“Just wandered down from the other beach, I guess,” Cara said indifferently. She was never as much interested in strangers as were her two friends.

Settling down again to finish their sunning, for they had had their swim some time earlier, the subject of Barbara Hale was once more introduced.

“I don’t see that you girls are helping me out very much with my guest list,” Cara reminded them. “You know I am bound to have Barbara. Now, I’ll offer a prize for the best suggestion. How shall I invite her?”

“Why not ‘hail’ her down here?” Louise suggested.

“Now, Louie; that’s being too smart; to pun on Barbara’s name,” answered Cara. “The fact is, or isn’t it? Does she come down here, ever?”

“It isn’t, she doesn’t. You don’t catch that smart girl wasting her time on the beach.” As Esther said this she seemed to enjoy the saying of it.

“I’d like to know, Essie,” drawled Cara, using the little name Esther detested, “what have you against Barbara Hale?”

“I!” How much she made of the smallest word! As if the idea were preposterous.

“Yes, you. Every time I mention Barbara you just seethe up.” Cara tossed up a shower of sand that slipped through her fingers in little streams—what was left of the shower did that. If, as she said, Esther did dislike Barbara, surely she, Cara, must have liked her, decidedly.

Esther didn’t try to answer the charge. They were, all three of them, just at that stage of young girlhood that might be called the mimic stage. They said smart things, or tried to say them, because older girls acted that way. True, the older girls never deigned to associate with Cara, and her “set.” Just “kids” they were still being inelegantly styled. But girls in second year high do feel rather important, and at this particular new summer season the three girls on the beach at Sea Cosset were not one whit less important—in their own way—than Elinor Towle, Katherine Barrett and Melinde Trainor, all over twenty, and now sitting on the same cozy little beach nearer the water. Merely degrees of difference separated them, but there seemed nothing essentially different between the two groups.

And to make the comparison still closer, here was Cara planning to give a house party.

“I don’t care what any one says,” Louise spoke up rather like a small girl again, “it’s a perfectly darling idea. Even if we all do live around here; what difference would a train ride make in a house party?”

“None; not a speck,” confirmed Esther, both the girls bracing Cara up in her resolve to give the party and worrying secretly lest she back out.

“Except,” chimed in Cara, “that when they come a distance they have to stay. If you girls get bored to death you could even sneak home in your nighties,” she wound up, turning a very good hand-spring to prove why she was such a fine basketball player.

“No danger of us sneaking home, Cara,” declared Louise. “I’m just crazy about the idea. And I know there are a lot of girls jealous because you didn’t ask them,” she flattered the prospective hostess.

“Really!” Cara reversed the hand-spring and threw up a veritable desert sandstorm with the turn. “The only reason I have asked just five,” she panted, settling again, “is because mother would only let me have three rooms.”

“Just imagine having three rooms for company!” gasped Esther. “I’m lucky to get an extra cot in my own room and the attic privilege while we’re down here. But you can invite a whole tribe to stay days with you.”

“Now girls!” spoke Cara, sighing a little as if in despair at their attitude, “don’t get the idea that a big house and a flock of servants make a lot of fun. They don’t. We had better times when we camped in a lovely wide-open bungalow out on the bluff, where you didn’t dare leave the front door open without danger of blowing out at the back door. Oh me, oh my!” she sighed. “Them was the days! When I ate molasses cookies without fear of fatness. But we are not getting at the important point of asking Barbara. Haven’t you anything else to propose? It will be time to dress before we decide a single thing.”

“Why not call on her? She’s not anything to be afraid of, is she?” This was Esther, of course.

“No.” Cara paused, thoughtfully. “But she is, I know, a busy girl, and one doesn’t want to ‘bust’ in on a high-brow just as she’s in the act of discovering some scientific—oh, whatever it is they discover, you know,” she floundered. “Besides, it would look so important if I called. As if my party was really going to be a party instead of a row. I’m sure it will end in a row, you know,” Cara was prettiest when she laughed.

“Cara Burke! You just want to make believe it isn’t going to be wonderful when you know very well it is,” pouted Louise. “But if you want Barbara Hale so badly, I’ll manage somehow to see her, and I’ll ask her if you want me to.”

“Want you to! I’d love you to. I just want Barbara, well, for more than one reason, but one is because Dud declares she wouldn’t bother with such silly little things as he claims we are. I want to show him.”

“Oh, that’s it.” Esther’s lip curled and she was now acting very grown up indeed.

“Does Dud know Barbara?” Louise wanted to know.

“That’s just it. She’s sort of, what he calls, elusive. They just know her enough to be curious about her.”

“I don’t think she’s so wonderfully pretty,” commented Esther again. “And I’m certain sure she’s not rich!”

“Esther Phester!” cried out Cara in mock despair. “There you go. Rich! That isn’t what counts at all, not with boys like Dud, anyway. They like girls who keep them guessing.”

“Oh, Barbara Hale can do that well enough,” scoffed Esther. “Isn’t she keeping us guessing?”

“Just because she keeps to herself,” retorted Cara. “Now, that’s just why I’m so crazy to know her. There must be a reason for her, oh, you know,” again stumbled Cara, who wanted to say there must have been a reason for Barbara’s aloofness, or was it reticence?

“Since you are so keen about it Cara, I’ll do my best,” offered Louise. “You know, her father is a sort of doctor and has some of the awfully rich folks on his list.”

“Rich!” moaned Cara. She seemed to loathe the word. They were starting off towards the boardwalk along which a slim line of girls and boys were already winding their way towards the road. It was almost lunch time.

Just as the girls came to within a few feet of the roadway a small car drew up and from it sprang two persons.

“Look!” gasped Louise. “There she is now!”

“Is that—Barbara!” exclaimed Cara in an undertone, for the two in bathing suits—a young girl and a young man—were racing along through the sands quite close to them.

“Yes,” answered Esther and Louise in one voice.

“Isn’t she stunning in a bathing suit?” continued the entranced Cara. “She must be dandy at athletics.” The two figures under scrutiny were now far enough away to be out of possible reach of the girls’ voices. Barbara Hale was wearing the regulation blue bathing suit with white stripes around the long Jersey and a loose sash flew along after her as she ran towards the ocean. She was trying to adjust her rubber cap as she went, and was just now crowding into it a closely bobbed head, chestnut in color, that beautiful brown that glows and glistens and lights up so wonderfully in the sunshine. Barbara was as slender and straight as an Indian. Her limbs were innocent of stockings or socks, for girls under sixteen were not now trying to be prim at Sea Cosset, that is, girls like Barbara.

“But who can the good-looking boy be?” Louise wondered. “Isn’t he just—just——”

“Not lovely,” warned Cara. “Please don’t call him anything so silly as that. He’s fine looking, just great. Whew! Look at those two strike out!”

Dots on the waves were all that could now be seen of the two who were ducking in and out of the crest, but the girls still watched as if fascinated.

“Better ask him to the party, Cara,” suggested Esther. “I’ll bet all the girls would want to stay if he were around.”

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” proposed the wily Cara. “I’ll tell Dudley I’ll have Barbara to the party if he manages to fetch along the good-looking boy. I’ve just decided to give a dance. Why shouldn’t we have a dance?” she asked simply, with one of those sudden strokes of social genius she was especially noted for.

“A dance!” echoed Louise, in ecstasy. She did clasp her hands but caught herself just in time to save that foolish expression Cara was sure to call saintly. Louise was very apt to clasp her hands, throw one of those heavenly looks out of her gray eyes, and altogether affect quite a pose when anything suddenly pleased her.

“Yes, a dance,” Cara repeated. “We are grown up enough for that, although we couldn’t, of course, ask the boys to the house party. They could come in to the dance.”

“Just look at Barbara Hale now,” suggested Esther. The figures were shaking themselves out of the waves, and as the girls watched they saw Barbara put her two hands on a big post that supported the ropes, and vault over as easily as did her companion following her. “Don’t you suppose he’s her cousin?” Esther asked, innocently.

“Not necessarily,” replied Cara. “But if we don’t make a break for lunch——” They made the break.

CHAPTER IIWHEN THE DAY ARRIVED

Between that day at the beach and the day set for the first session to the house party, Cara all but backed out several times. It was rather absurd, to ask five girls to week-end at her lovely big home, the Billows, to bring clothes enough for three days and to stay for almost that length of time, when they all lived near enough to run home if their mothers should call them—on the telephone.

But from the time that Cara mentioned the brilliant idea to Louise and Esther, she was not allowed to change her mind. There is not a great deal of excitement for girls of their ages at little sea-coast towns, and the prospects of a house party were far too precious to relinquish.

Mrs. Burke, Cara’s mother, was rather pleased that her athletic daughter thought of anything so socially refining, for, as a rule, Cara cared very little for the amenities. She liked, very much better, to row their boat on the lake that always seemed to envy the wild little wavelets that flew about the ocean’s edge, or she might stay on the golf links all day with her dad, who believed in golf for girls as well as for boys, and there was only Dudley at Burke’s to share honors with his sister Cara.

So now that the day of the party was actually at hand, Cara felt like “laughing her head off,” as she described her unusual emotions.

“If it wasn’t that I just made this chance to get acquainted with Barbara Hale, Moma,” (she always called her mother Moma because it means soft, in Celtic,) “I would be apt to think myself silly. But it’s worth while to meet Barbara.”

“Why is she so difficult and desirable?” asked Mrs. Burke, who might be Moma or “soft” to her daughter, but as a woman seemed quite the opposite. She was capable of formality, fine, dignified yet lovely with just that charm that all mothers should possess.

“Well,” replied Cara to her question, as she settled a final bunch of snap-dragons on the long davenport table in the living-room, “to tell you the truth, Moma, she’s a bit mysterious.”

“A girl—mysterious; how?”

“Oh, in a lot of ways. I couldn’t just tell you, darling, but they’re plenty. Wait until you meet her,” she promised archly. “I’m sure you will call her perfect; I believe all the grown-ups do. She’s said to be so sensible.”

“Not too sensible, I hope,” qualified Mrs. Burke, who liked girls to be girls and not Minervas.

“No. My own idea is that the sensible stuff is just a pose to keep the girls away. She’s not cranky, I know that. I met her at the Community Club last week,” continued Cara, who was now donning her white sport coat, preparing for a race in town. “At any rate, Moma, I’m sure it will do me a lot of good to know her,” she just nipped a make-believe kiss on her mother’s cheek. “She might inspire me with a little sense.”

“Oh, you’re not so bad, my dear,” replied the proud mother, surveying Cara affectionately. “But I am really anxious to meet the paragon.”

A half-hour later Cara was being surrounded at the post office; the girls who were shortly to be her guests formed the circle. She had just told them that Barbara was coming.

“How ever did you get her?” demanded Louise.

“As easy as easy,” teased Cara. “All I did was just give the operator the number and Barbara answered.” Cara was plainly proud of the conquest.

“And she said she’d come? Right off?” asked Esther in uncovered surprise.

“Said she would love to, not what you might call exactly ‘right off’ but after her father had urged her to. He calls her Babs and they seem to be great chums,” Cara finished, trying to break away from the party and reach her mail-box.

“Oh, they are,” agreed Louise. “That’s just what makes her so different. She’s always chumming with her father. Isn’t that queer?”

“Not so very,” said Cara dryly. “Dad and I are pretty good chums. But I’ve got to rush or I won’t be at the front door to greet you when you arrive,” and she did break away this time.

“Cara!” called Lida Bent, a new girl in Sea Cosset, “shall we really bring our suit-cases?”

“Just as you like,” answered Cara, mischievously stepping back to make her remarks safe for Lida’s ears only. “If you want to carry your pajamas on your arm I have no objection. There really isn’t any obligation to carry suit-cases.”

“Now Cara,” blushed little Lida who was a dainty blonde and blushed prettily, “you know I don’t mean that.”

“Well, Lida, you may bring a steamer trunk if you like,” joked Cara, “only be sure to come. That’s the big idea,” and Cara Burke, the heroine of the day with a house party only a few hours off, clutched her bundle of morning mail as she escaped from her admiring friends.

Cara was always such a lark, they each and all were sure to be thinking, and to give this affair simply sealed that opinion.

Louise, Esther, and Lida sauntered off with their own post office material, but this today seemed less interesting than usual.

“I didn’t know whether to fetch my corduroy or silk robe,” said Louise. “If we go romping around I suppose the silk——”

“Will be too thin,” Esther finished laughingly. “You’re lucky, Louie, to have two down with you. Mother just won’t allow any duplicates in my clothes. She hates baggage so.”

“A robe?” repeated Lida. “Why, I hadn’t thought of that. Of course we must fetch robes,” she repeated showing alarm that the idea had almost escaped her.

“That’s mostly what a house party is for,” Louise continued. “To show off our pretty things. Although,” she hurried to atone for the possible boast, “I don’t pretend to have pretty things, they’re just—just useful of course,” she ended trying hard to be sensible.

“There’s Ruth!” exclaimed Esther, as a girl with a big box turned a corner and walked towards them. “I’ll bet she’s got a new robe. Look at that box.”

“’Low girls!” called out Ruth Harrison, a tall girl who walked with a swinging stride. “I had to go shopping the last minute, and I’m dead. Whew! It’s hot carrying bundles,” and she took off her hat to prove it.